City taking on rogue valet parking services: In Little Italy, Fells Point and other city neighborhoods where restaurants and clubs commingle with houses and apartments, complaints about valet parking companies have grown common. The City Council now is considering new rules for those firms and, for the first time, making them answerable to the Baltimore City Parking Authority.

Some feel city covered up extent of St. Patrick's Day violence: Baltimore police have for years combated youths descending on downtown, causing fights and other trouble, and have employed the same strategy: push them out without resorting to mass arrests, just as they did Saturday night. At the same time, police have battled a perception of Baltimore being ravaged by crime -- even as crime rates have declined.

Democratic tax plan faces challenge from within: A carefully choreographed strategy to raise state income taxes to stave off so-called doomsday budget cuts faces a challenge in the General Assembly after several Democrats defied party leaders with a proposal to raise the sales tax instead.